Why Bruins’ net should be Jeremy Swayman’s for remainder of playoffs originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
Jeremy Swayman is the No. 1 goalie of the Boston Bruins, and unless injury prevents him from doing his job at a high level, there’s no way he should be taken out of the net for the remainder of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Even if there’s a small dip in performance — and it’ll probably come at some point — the Bruins should still stick with him the rest of the way.
This isn’t some weird idea, either. This is standard procedure for the playoffs. One goalie establishes himself as the best guy and the team relies on him to the end, whether it results in a championship or not. Tim Thomas did it. Tuukka Rask did it. Nearly every goalie who has won a Stanley Cup this century has done it.
Swayman was the NHL’s best goalie in the first round, but his best performance of the playoffs so far came in Monday night’s Game 1 against the Florida Panthers to open Round 2.
“The guy is always dialed in,” a smiling Mason Lohrei told reporters postgame, via the NESN broadcast. “We’re not worried about that. He’s unbelievable and the backbone of this team. We’re lucky to have him, and he’s one of the best goalies in the league.”
The Bruins won Game 1 by a 5-1 score. But don’t let that margin fool you — the Panthers actually played pretty well for large stretches of the game. They had a good start, forcing Swayman to make nine saves in the first period, including a Grade A stop with the right pad just 45 seconds into the game.
The Panthers earned a 41-23 edge in scoring chances and a 17-12 lead in high-danger chances overall. Expected goals were 3.4 to 3.2 in favor of the Panthers, per analytics website Natural Stat Trick. Swayman made a playoff-high 38 saves on 39 shots for his fifth victory of the postseason.
Even when the Panthers created traffic in front of the net, Swayman did a great job locating the puck and making saves with his strong positioning.
“We made a lot of mistakes,” Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery admitted postgame. “And if it’s not for Jeremy Swayman, that would have been a really — a lot closer game and maybe they come out on top. Like, we didn’t have enough scoring chances. Yeah, the score is not indicative of the way the game went.”
The hot goalie is a real thing this time of the year. We’ve seen lots of great teams go down because a goalie plays out of his mind for two weeks or more.
Not only is Swayman so dialed in right now, the…